Double Dare Read Free

Christmas?” Darcy blanched. “Are you serious?”
    “Do I look serious?” Maggie glanced back over her shoulder. “Would you like to spend Christmas with your ex and the new woman in his life?”
    “Well, no. But I don’t know, being alone on Christmas really sucks, Maggie.”
    “I know.” She’d been alone the past two years and hated it. “And I’ll still take being alone over being with them.”
    Darcy lifted the receiver to her mouth. “Karen, Maggie can’t come to the phone right now. She said to tell you she appreciates the invitation but she won’t be able to make it.” Darcy paused, then relayed. “Um, no, Karen. She’ll be alone.” Another pause and then, “Um, no, I didn’t know you cried all day last year because she was by herself, but…”
    Humiliated, Maggie grabbed the phone. “Karen, thanks for asking. Really. But I don’t need your pity. I’m just not interested in being with you or Jack.”
    “But, Maggie, I just—”
    “I know. You just want to ease your guilty conscience and Jack’s, too. Well, sorry. I’m dealing with my own guilty conscience, and you guys just have to deal with yours on your own.” Maggie put the phone down on thetable and threw one of Amanda’s darts. It just missed Kunz’s right eye. Bastard Jack was probably drunk again, insisting Karen invite Maggie over. Anger poured acid, burning in her stomach. Karen wanted him, she got him.
    “Jeez, Maggie.” Amanda gave her shoulders a shake. “That’s a little cold. Karen just didn’t want you sad and alone on Christmas.”
    “Uh, no.” Maggie turned to face Amanda. “Cold is me pulling a seventy-two-hour stint, working the anthrax issue after 9/11, finally hauling my exhausted ass home, and finding my beloved husband in my bed having sex with my most trusted, best friend. That’s cold.”
    “I still can’t believe that.” Amanda set down her cup, picked up her darts. “What did you do?”
    “What do you think I did?” Maggie asked, reliving the shock, the betrayal, the disbelief, the guilt and the incredible, overwhelming sadness she’d felt then and since.
    “I’d have shot him right in the—”
    “We know what you’d have done, Kate,” Amanda quickly cut in.
    “Neuter his faithless backside with a .38,” Kate said anyway. “Hollowpoint, so it’d explode on impact.”
    “Of course,” Amanda said calmly. “And we’d expect no less from you, Kate. But this is about Maggie, not you.” Amanda looked back at Maggie. “So what did you do?”
    “Booted them both out—naked, like I found them. Then I dragged the mattress and all Jack’s clothes into the backyard and burned them. The next morning, I filed for divorce and took half of everything else he had.”
    Amanda grunted, her arms folded over her chest. “You should’ve gone for all of it.”
    “Especially since you didn’t shoot him,” Kate interjected, snagging a powdered-sugar doughnut from a box someone had brought in.
    “You did have to buy a new bed.” That, from Darcy.
    Maggie had. “And a new privacy fence and a new storage shed. I didn’t replace the boat.”
    “What happened to the boat?” Amanda asked. “I missed that.”
    “It was parked by the fence. The wind blew the fire and things got a little out of hand.”
    “Right.” Kate snorted. “You’re a weapons expert and you’re telling me you couldn’t burn a mattress and some clothes without setting a boat, fence and storage shed on fire?”
    Maggie looked her right in the eye with a straight face. “Shut up, Kate.”
    A smile tugged at Kate’s lip. “But his car was too close to the house, right?”
    “Parked in the garage.” Thank God, or she might have burned it, too.
    “Slashed tires?” she asked.
    “All four.” Maggie snatched a doughnut, more to cover her disgust than because she thought she could actually swallow it. “He and Karen departed, riding on rims.”
    “Excellent.” Kate chewed and swallowed. “You got her car, too,